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My dad and I took another mini road trip recently, and since reading to each other worked so well on the last road trip we took, I decided to try it again. Plus I still had to knock reading aloud to someone off my Read Harder Challenge. So I grabbed a couple books that looked like fun and that I thought we both would enjoy, plus my kindle and another book just for me ’cause, you know, girl’s gotta be prepared.
Shortly after we set out I presented my dad with his options. He had read some of Terry Pratchett’s books many years ago and asked me to read the synopsis of this one to see if he had read it before. It’s a pretty short synopsis and didn’t do anything to jog his memory so he told me to go ahead and start reading. Also it was the shorter of my two choices. Once I started reading, my dad realized he had read this book, but it had been a couple decades.
I think I picked up this book when a friend was clearing out their bookshelves. I had never read anything by Terry Pratchett before and I don’t think I had ever heard of Discworld, I just thought this book looked like fun. And it was. When my dad realized I didn’t know anything about Discworld, he stopped me to explain how the world works, which I appreciated, but it wasn’t really necessary. This book, like most sequels, does a pretty good job of filling in the reader on the relevant parts we may have missed or forgotten from the first book. So despite the fact this is the second book in the Discworld series and I have yet to read the first, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything crucial.
This book was a lot of fun and had my dad and I laughing out loud at many points throughout the book. That alone makes it a great book to read aloud to someone/have someone read to you. It’s fantasy, but it also makes fun of a lot of the fantasy tropes. The narrator stops at several points to explain how ridiculous some of the tropes are, and why his characters don’t follow them. For example, there’s a badass swordswoman that he takes pains to explain does not dress in skimpy outfits because of how impractical that would be considering her profession. Thank you, Pratchett!
Then there’s the ruler who outlawed any physical descriptions that are not strictly literal, which eliminated any and all metaphors. Not to mention Cohen the Barbarian. He takes after exactly who you think he takes after, but he’s 87 years old, and yet he still manages to get the young virgin.
The plot was fairly simple and formulaic, but I was still anxious to get to through it to see what the bad guy would do, how Rincewind would survive, and what the hell that mysterious book of spells was up to. It was all highly entertaining and hilarious and I definitely recommend you check it out if you haven’t already done so. Or even if you have. Then you can spoil the end for someone like my dad spoiled it for me when we stopped for lunch.
What did you guys read this week? Anything you got to share with a loved one? I want to hear all about it!